Assorted questions

[J Bytheway]

I am in the midst of writing a scenario for CTP, it's loosely based on a Civ2 scenario (unpublished) of mine based around the colonization of Mars (I decided Alpha Centauri was a bit too far away). So far I've completely revamped the advances, improvements, wonders and units, stealing ideas from various Civs, some of my other scenarios and Alpha Centauri. I was having great problems before installing the 1.21 hack, for which I am most grateful. Now it's possible to play the scenario fairly normally.

However, since I haven't touched the AI computer players (including barbarian units just wandering around) have a nasty tendancy to crash the game. I can't quite face fiddling with all those files, and was wondering if there was a way to make all personalities use default.aip, either by removing all the personalities but one in some file, or by making empty copies of all the other .aip files? Otherwise, it will be necessary to copy default.aip out to all the other files every time I modify it.

What about the other files in the AI section. Will they need modification? I don't understand the .fli files at all.

Also, the game crashes whenever you try to look at the ranking screen. Does anyone have an explanation/solution for this?

Lastly, does anyone know if of how (probably with SLIC (about which I know nothing - but I could learn)) it would be possible to simulate some of the effects from Civ2 which are laking:

Gain a free advance if first to advance philosophy (or some other tech)
Get partisans (or some other unit) when your city is lost and you have guerilla warfare (number of partisans should depend on terrrain (prefer mountains/hills/jungle/etc.), city population, govt of defending (and possibly attacking?) nation (consider fascism & virt. democracy))
Possibility of nuclear meltdown if city riots or revolts with nuclear power plant.

No details, but it would be nice to know if such things can be done.

Thanks for putting up with my rambling and in advance for any information supplied.

John Bytheway

[ZoboZeWarrior]

Re: Assorted questions

Originally posted by J Bytheway
Lastly, does anyone know if of how (probably with SLIC (about which I know nothing - but I could learn)) it would be possible to simulate some of the effects from Civ2 which are laking:

Gain a free advance if first to advance philosophy (or some other tech)
Get partisans (or some other unit) when your city is lost and you have guerilla warfare (number of partisans should depend on terrrain (prefer mountains/hills/jungle/etc.), city population, govt of defending (and possibly attacking?) nation (consider fascism & virt. democracy))
Possibility of nuclear meltdown if city riots or revolts with nuclear power plant.
.

Yes it is possible with SLIC. With SLIC you program trigger which are activated by specified events (new year, new tech ...).

You can add tech, units, detroy cities maybe or building...

And SLIC is quite easy. Lot of info about SLIC on CtP web site on apolyton.

[Nordicus]

Hey, John...

Whoa...
Lots of problems there...have you kept track of what files you've altered?

However, since I haven't touched the AI computer players (including barbarian units just wandering around) have a nasty tendancy to crash the game. I can't quite face fiddling with all those files, and was wondering if there was a way to make all personalities use default.aip, either by removing all the personalities but one in some file, or by making empty copies of all the other .aip files? Otherwise, it will be necessary to copy default.aip out to all the other files every time I modify it.

Hmmmmm. I *suppose* you could rig something thru aiploader.fli...but I have no suggestions on how to go about it. Hmmm...well, setting the AI thru civilisation.txt {default/gamedata}, that would be easier. From my file:

RUSSIAN #2
{
CIV_LEADER_NAME RUSSIAN_LEADERM_NAME
CIV_LEADER_NAME_FEMALE RUSSIAN_LEADERF_NAME
CIV_PERSONALITY_MALE "Slaver"
CIV_PERSONALITY_FEMALE "Slaver"
CIV_PERSONALITY_DESCRIPTION PERSONALITY_DESCRIPTION_SLAVER

Try changing them all to, say, SciMany...that way the only file you'd need to change would be for that aip...
Hmmm... "default.aip"--maybe you create the personalty files for that aip. Such as, beginturnDefault.fli, personalityDefault.fli, mainDefault.fli etc....

Yeah...I don't know if that would work...
IMHO, setting them all as one AIP {like WarMany or SciMany--or have em all Clerics...} might work...

But...I'm not sure why the AI would be crashing the game...I'd have to know what files you've changed and what the crashes are like--error messages?

Also, the game crashes whenever you try to look at the ranking screen. Does anyone have an explanation/solution for this?

Huh. That's odd. I haven't heard of this one... Sorry...


T.

[Immortal Wombat]

Re: Assorted questions

I am in the midst of writing a scenario for CTP, it's loosely based on a Civ2 scenario (unpublished) of mine based around the colonization of Mars (I decided Alpha Centauri was a bit too far away).

Hee hee, I'm doing Mars for CTP2

Also, the game crashes whenever you try to look at the ranking screen. Does anyone have an explanation/solution for this?

This is just a very tentative theory, but the ranking screen also has the wonder pictures that you have built, yes?
If one of them was missing or dodgy, or something then that might be causing the crash.

Lastly, does anyone know if of how (probably with SLIC (about which I know nothing - but I could learn)) it would be possible to simulate some of the effects from Civ2 which are laking:

Gain a free advance if first to advance philosophy (or some other tech)
Get partisans (or some other unit) when your city is lost and you have guerilla warfare (number of partisans should depend on terrrain (prefer mountains/hills/jungle/etc.), city population, govt of defending (and possibly attacking?) nation (consider fascism & virt. democracy))
Possibility of nuclear meltdown if city riots or revolts with nuclear power plant.

The free advance is possible if you define which advance you will grant afterwards. It is difficult-to-impossible to refer back a turn using SLIC, so you would have to define in advance the advance to grant.

Partisans could be done, but if you want all those factors it might be a lot of code!
One thing though, before Mars has an atmosphere, how do partisans appear outside the city domes? They would run out of air pretty quick

Nuclear meltdown is very possible (and thanks for the idea , might just use that one )

[J Bytheway]

OK, taking your points in turn... (I won't quote, my message is already long enough)

I'll be reading the SLIC docs I downloaded later - lots of other stuff to do first.

I am doing it all in a scenario directory - so that automatically keeps track of altered files.

I knew there'd be a file defining personalities somewhere - I haven't looked at civilisation.txt in ages, so I'd forgotten. Changing all those seems like a good idea. I'll also want to change all the civs at some point, I guess. (Jamaicans on Mars? Just where did they get the funding for this trip?)

The crashes are nasty old 'your program has performed an illegal operation' ones. I'm assuming they're caused by the AI saying "OK, now I'm supposed to build UNIT_HOPLITE. Check to see what tech that requires... Oh! There's no such unit! Oh $#**" and such like. I've changed the following txt files so far: (from default\gamedata) advance, age, DiffDB, govern, improve, installations, pop, terrain, units, wonder, (from english\gamedata) gl_str, ldl_str. Basically, I changed the tech tree, units, improvements and wonders and the error messages led me to the other files. The game is vastly expanded now - I'm up to 230 advances, 60 improvements (some of which get made obsolete! Like barracks from gunpowder, except that you can't build them back again. Unfortunately, there's no inbuilt message to inform the player that due to modern terraforming practices, all his biospheres are no longer inspiring the populous - they would rather see the open Martian sky above their heads. I guess that means more SLIC...), 125 units and 100 wonders. In fact, the units.txt is now so large that my jury-rigged Visual Basic editing program overflows it's string database when I try to open it, so now I have to edit it with a text editor instead (Shame!).

The wonders currently all have the same picture, great library entry, description and movie (that of stonehenge). Perhaps this is the problem. However, I think that I used to be able to access the ranking screen when it crashed for all those other reasons. Could it be the v1.21 hack? I don't think so... It's rather annoying having the ranking screen inaccessible, because it's impossible to check time to ecological disaster (But perhaps that just makes it more realistic?)

The partisans probably wouldn't die because I'm likely to base this on a partially terraformed, at-least-has-a-breathable-atmosphere Mars. This has (at least) three benefits:
You can start with (relatively) primitive technology without the complaint of "If they haven't discoved plastics yet, then how are they keeping alive?"
You don't have to change the terrain pictures.
You can have oceans.

I'll probably invent a backplot along the lines of "Earth is slowly choking on it's own pollution (maybe WWIII?) and with their last resources, a few of the remaining superpowers send a badly equipped mission to continue the human race on Mars, where a terraforming program begun centuries ago has at last come to fruition..." and so forth.

My latest playtest has resulted in only a page-long list of bugs, so soon I may have to start writing all the entries for the great library and the descriptions. And I have to check to see if there's some pictures I can use for all these units (I'm using the nuclear missile picture for about 15 units at the moment )

Sorry for another long post (and all those brackets),

John

[Immortal Wombat]

125 units

You got sprites for those, or just existing ones?

The partisans probably wouldn't die because I'm likely to base this on a partially terraformed, at-least-has-a-breathable-atmosphere Mars. This has (at least) three benefits:
You can start with (relatively) primitive technology without the complaint of "If they haven't discoved plastics yet, then how are they keeping alive?"
You don't have to change the terrain pictures.
You can have oceans.

I'll probably invent a backplot along the lines of "Earth is slowly choking on it's own pollution (maybe WWIII?) and with their last resources, a few of the remaining superpowers send a badly equipped mission to continue the human race on Mars, where a terraforming program begun centuries ago has at last come to fruition..." and so forth.

Cunning

Sounds very good. I have to decide now whether to do my scenario quickly, or wait, and *borrow* ideas from you
Good luck with the GL

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat

You got sprites for those, or just existing ones?

Just using existing ones at the moment - the nuclear missile sprite is currently standing in for:
Bomb, Smart bomb, AM bomb, Nuclear bomb, Cruise missile, Nuclear missile, ICBM, IPBM, Interceptor, Hyperceptor and Torpedo units - which can get a little confusing . Quite a few of the others are nearly as bad...
Graphics rather turns my stomach.

Sounds very good. I have to decide now whether to do my scenario quickly, or wait, and *borrow* ideas from you

Well, I have a solution that would help us both - I could really use a beta tester (or more like an alpha tester at the moment) to spot all those problems which are slipping past me before I start integrating them too deeply. I'd be happy to repay you with all the ideas I have invested. That way you could do your project soon AND use my ideas. It would also be handy if you could rope some freinds in later (when the combat units require testing to check for irresistable forces, unmovable barriers and the like) because playing all these hotseat games against myself gets rather boring and eliminates all possibility of surprise...

And, if you wanted to help with the graphics or the AI then I'd be eternally grateful.

I'm offline for a week starting tomorrow, and by the time I return the scenario should be in a fit state for the outside world (i.e. you) to see .

And this message goes out to anyone else who's listening too.

John